DAYONE CASE STUDY  Review the DayOne Case Study at the end of Chapter 9.Compose a minimum of 1,400 words in which you discuss the DayOne Case Study:Examine what more the members of the DayOne team ca

Dayone Case Study

In an uncharacteristic show of frustration, Andrew Zenoff nearly tossed the phone into its cradle on his desk when his latest funding lead—number 182—had decided not to invest. With the 2003 winter holiday season in full swing, the 38-year-old seasoned entrepreneur knew that his fundraising efforts would now fall on deaf ears until after the New Year holiday.

Andrew stared out from the open office at a group of young mothers in the retail area—all cradling newborns—chatting with the nursing staff and with each other as they waited for the morning lactation class to begin.

Those new moms out there need us; that's why we're doing well despite a terrible location, a recession, and no money for advertising! So why can't I seem to convince investors what a great opportunity this is?! Am I—along with my staff and all of our satisfied customers—suffering from some sort of collective delusion?

He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and calmed down. After all, he quickly reminded himself, his San Francisco–based DayOne Center—a one-stop resource for new and expectant parents—was doing just fine as it approached its third year of operations. What Andrew and his team were being told, though, was that, before funds would flow, they would need to provide additional proof of concept—a second center, sited and scaled to match the DayOne business plan. The chicken-egg challenge, of course, was that they would need about a million dollars to build that proof. Andrew leaned back to consider his best options for moving forward.

My Brest Friend

A graduate of Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, Andrew was no stranger to entrepreneurial mountain-climbing. For three years, he had strived to build a national distribution channel for My Brest Friend, the most popular nursing pillow in a fragmented market. By 1996, he had secured an overseas manufacturer, office space in a San Francisco warehouse, and a few volume accounts that were yielding a decent—but far from satisfying—cash flow. He was still wrestling with the issue of how to educate the buyer about the advantages of his product when suddenly his venture had come under siege:

A nursing pillow company that was not doing well somehow thought that I had copied their design. There was no infringement, but they sued us anyway, and I decided to fight. The owner of this company was a woman with kids, and as the suit dragged on, my lawyers convinced me that, if this thing went to trial, a jury might side with her instead of a guy who has no kids and has never been married. If she won, they'd get an injunction against me, and that would be the end of my business.

That year I switched law firms three times, spent over $250,000 on legal fees, and ended up paying a settlement in the low six figures. I was emotionally drained, and nearly entirely out of cash, but I had managed to save my business.

A Question of Distribution

Following that painful settlement in the spring of 1997, Andrew set about to devise a more effective delivery model for his nursing pillow enterprise. He soon came to the realization that the solution he was looking for didn't exist:

We definitely had the best product in the category. The problem was that people needed to be educated to that fact—either outright or through trusted word of mouth. The various channels I had worked with—big retailers, hospitals, Internet sites, catalog companies, lactation consultants—each offered only a certain facet of what a new parent needed, and so none of them had been really efficient at delivering my product to the marketplace. What it needed was a combination of education, retailing, and community.

This case was prepared by Carl Hedberg under the direction of Professor William Bygrave. © Copyright Babson College, 2004. Funding provided by the Frederic C. Hamilton Chair for Free Enterprise. All rights reserved.

Later that summer, Andrew got a call from one of his customers, Sallie Weld, Director of the Perinatal Center at the California Pacific Medical Center. An active promoter of My Brest Friend, Sallie had come to a frustrating juncture in her own career:

During the mid to late 1990s, I had spent a lot of time and energy setting up a new type of perinatal center. New moms were coming in asking for support and advice on various products—breast pumps in particular. When we started carrying pumps, that sort of opened up a Pandora's Box; now people wanted other products to go with the pumps. Andrew's pillow, for example, was the best on the market, so we started carrying that.

And after a couple of years, this retail aspect of our childbirth and parenting education program began to turn a profit—and the minute it did, the hospital got greedy. They told us that we were not going to be able to hire more trained staff to handle the increased demand for our consults, and they said that all of our retailing profits would be channeled back into the general fund to support other departments. That was incredibly frustrating. I knew I was onto something, though, and I started a consulting business to help other perinatal centers. The problem was, they couldn't pay much for my services. That's when I decided to give Andrew a call.

They agreed to meet at Zim's Restaurant, an aging diner in the upscale Laurel Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. It was a meeting that would change their lives.

DayOne—Beginnings

In August 1997, Sallie and Andrew met at Zim's for coffee and carrot juice, respectively. Sallie explained that no single service provider had ever been able to adequately serve the various needs of new moms:

A hospital setting would seem to be the natural place to set up an educational support and product center for these women, but the bureaucracy just won't let that happen. There are also plenty of examples where nurses have tried to offer outside consulting services to new mothers, but while that's a great thought, they never seem to get very far without the business and retail component. And retailing without knowledgeable support is just products on a shelf.

After 90 minutes of brainstorming, the pieces suddenly fell into place. Andrew had found the unique distribution model he'd been searching for:

I said to Sallie, “Let's move these hybrid health-services retailing ideas into a private care center outside of the hospital—a retail center that could provide new and expecting parents with everything they needed in one place.” We'd be backing up the hospitals and supporting women at a critical and emotionally charged period in their lives.

This was like a lightning bolt of a vision for both of us, and at that moment, we decided that we were going to build a national chain of these centers. That was the beginning of DayOne.

Having already built one business from scratch, Andrew noted that he wasn't surprised that it was months before they were ready to take a material step:

I had told Sallie that, even though this sounded great, she shouldn't think about quitting her job at the hospital until I had a chance to lead us in an exercise to see if this business was a viable idea. I conducted a ton of focus groups, and every week Sallie and I would get together to talk about what I had learned—and what kind of center DayOne would be. After about nine months, in the summer of 1998, we decided, yes, this makes sense; let's do it.

Seed Funding

Andrew called investor Mark Anderssen, a shareholder and an active supporter of My Brest Friend. When Mark seemed receptive to the DayOne concept, Andrew paid him a visit:

I flew to Norway to meet with him in person. I was sure that after we opened up one of these, we'd be able to attract enough capital to start a chain. I figured that we would need about $300,000 to fund the next year and a half; we would be writing the business plan and working on the build-out requirements so that, when we were ready, we could move through the construction process quickly and get it opened. He said great and put up about half the money to get us started.

As Sallie focused in on staffing requirements and retail offerings, Andrew began writing the plan, defining the target market (see Exhibit 9.1), designing the space, and looking for the right retail location: upscale, ground floor, easy parking, with excellent signage potential.

That summer, about a year after their momentous meeting of the minds, the Zim's restaurant block fell to the wrecking ball to make way for a brand new office and retail complex. Andrew saw that the location was close to the hospitals, was in a vibrant retail area, had good stroller accessibility, and offered lots of parking. When the developer pointed out the street-level retail availability on the blueprints, Andrew saw that it was precisely where Zim's had been; DayOne would be growing up in the exact spot where Andrew and Sallie had had their first meeting.

Andrew secured the space with a sizable deposit, engaged the architects, and scheduled a contractor to handle the build-out. With their sights now set on an April 2000 Grand Opening, Sallie left her job to become DayOne's first paid employee. Everything was on schedule and proceeding as planned. Then, suddenly, nothing was.

Scrambling to Survive

In January, Andrew contacted his funding partner for the other half of the seed funding allocation. The investor, who had recently suffered some losses in high tech, explained that he would be unable to extend any more money. Andrew was in shock:

Things were already rolling along; I had architects working, Sallie and two assistants on payroll, a huge locked-in lease—and now, suddenly, with the bills mounting up, we were out of capital!

Andrew had been pitching the DayOne vision to other investors all along, and that same week an individual came forward with a substantial amount of money to invest. Andrew explained that, while the promise of cash got him motivated, he soon concluded that this wasn't just about the money:

This investor approached me and said that since I clearly understood the baby industry, he could get me a million and a half bucks for an Internet company. So I spent four weeks trying to figure out how I could do this on the Internet. Then I realized that, even though I probably could come up with something, it wouldn't really provide new parents with what they needed. And so I went back to them and said that I can't do it; it's not in line with my values and my beliefs.

EXHIBIT 9.1Business Plan Excerpt: The Market

According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, women in the United States are having more children than at any time in almost 30 years. With four million births annually—more than half are first-time parents—the United States produces more than 2.2 million potential new customers each year. Indeed, the current baby boom is projected to continue until 2018. Spending an average of $8,100 on baby-related products and services during their baby's first year (excluding primary medical care), new parents represent more than $17.8 billion in annual purchasing power.

In recent years, the size of the juvenile products industry alone—i.e., products for babies 0–18 months—has grown to $16 billion annually. The company plans to reach the most commercially attractive part of this market—approximately 1,350,000 first-time parents each year with a college education and at least middle-income households. Additionally, the company expects to reach the market of more than 1,000,000 second-time parents annually, who comprise 25% of DayOne's target customer base.

The percentage of women in the United States who choose to breastfeed their babies continues to rise dramatically each year. According to a 2001 survey of 1.4 million mothers, the prevalence of breastfeeding in the United States is at the highest rate ever recorded, with 69.5% of new mothers now initiating breastfeeding, and 32% still breastfeeding at 6 months. (Breastfeeding Continues to Increase into the New Millennium, Pediatrics, Vol. 110, No. 6, Dec. 2002.) Moreover, 78.3% of college-educated mothers with household incomes of greater than $50,000 breastfeed versus a national average of 59.2%, and 59.2% of second-time mothers are breastfeeding.

As an ever-increasing number of studies confirm the advantages of breastfeeding for babies' immune systems and intellectual development, DayOne expects the incidence of breastfeeding to remain on the rise. Indeed, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 75% of all first-time mothers will try to breastfeed their child compared to less than 50% only 15 years ago.

More than two-thirds of breastfeeding women experience difficulty during breastfeeding and seek outside help. The majority of these problems surface after the brief hospital stay, when access to hospital-based lactation consulting programs is no longer available. Most mothers first turn to their pediatricians and OBGYNs, who are increasingly referring first-time mothers to lactation consultants because they lack the time and specific expertise. DayOne provides pediatricians, OBGYNs, and new mothers with a high-availability support solution.

There are numerous other market factors that favor DayOne's solution:

•  The existing market is highly fragmented. In order to receive necessary services, products, and support, new and expectant parents must navigate between baby specialty stores, catalogs, Internet sites, hospitals, and independent childbirth educators and lactation consultants.

•  Pregnant women and new mothers desire community for support, information, and the opportunity to share common experiences.

•  Hospitals continue to downsize, reducing staffs and shortening the duration of maternity visits, forcing new mothers to rely on outside sources for needed support and services.

•  Baby specialty stores continue to disappear off of the retail landscape in the face of big-box operators, reducing the personal touch that new parents seek.

Although he was now sure that the DayOne model wouldn't work as a Web business, Andrew saw that there still might be a way to leverage the red-hot Internet space to garner the funding he so desperately needed:

I met with a big online company that was doing baby-related things and told them that I thought their model had issues; first-time parents need to touch and feel and learn before they buy. I suggested that in order to survive long-term, they would need to partner with a bricks-and-mortar business like the kind we were building.

Well, at the time their stock was worth several hundred million; those two guys told me that they were doing just fine and that they had no interest in what we were doing at DayOne. You know, a year later, they were out of business.

DayOne centers were designed to be a key distribution channel for Brest Friend products, so Andrew aggressively leveraged resources at his wholesale venture in an effort to keep the flagship store on schedule. That had worked well for a while, but ever since Andrew began working long hours to open DayOne, sales of his nursing pillows had fallen precipitously. It was now achingly clear that, if this innovative distribution concept failed, My Brest Friend would be facing a long road back.

By March 2000, DayOne had amassed $200,000 in payables that Andrew couldn't begin to cover—at least not in the near term. Two architectural firms had already walked out on the project when they became aware that the startup was suffering from a severe funding gap. Andrew convinced the third one to come on board by pointing out that he himself wasn't drawing a salary—that his partner Sallie had resigned from a good job at the hospital to do this, and that they had already begun to interview and hire additional staff. This was real; they would find a way. That's just about the time that things began to get really ugly.

Nightmare on the Second Floor

By mid-March, DayOne had endured 45 days without cash, and Andrew had spoken with nearly 50 investors, without success. The landlord called. Construction, it seemed, was behind schedule—a fact that, under the circumstances, suited Andrew just fine. When the landlord requested a face-to-face meeting as soon as possible, Andrew was pretty sure that the guy wasn't calling him in to apologize a second time for the occupancy delay:

The landlord tells me that because of our financial position, they are not going to let us have a ground floor space; he's afraid that DayOne couldn't cover the rent. He says the only space they have for us is on the second floor—end of story. I said, “I don't know what to do; I don't have the money. I need to get out of this lease.” He said, “Well, you're on the second floor, and you can't get out of the lease.” Great; a lease for a top-floor space that I couldn't pay for.

Andrew returned the following day with a stronger argument:

I said look, you can't squeeze blood from a stone. And anyway, I am out of this lease because your building has taken so long to deliver that my investors have backed out! I told him that I can't honor the lease because he hadn't honored his deal. He didn't really respond to me, but we both knew that I was all done.

Andrew was trying to visualize how he was going to break this devastating news to his partner Sallie when he received an astounding call on his cell phone:

I had been pitching the business plan to everyone I could think of and hadn't gotten anywhere. All of a sudden here was an investor calling to say that he and three others were interested in putting up $150,000 apiece. $450,000 was about half of what I would need to open, and a lot less than the $1.5 million I was trying to raise as a first round. But it was a start; I pushed the “Go” button again.

I went back to the real estate guy and said, “You know, you're right; even if this is on the second floor, this is my space. I'll keep it.” That's when he told me that he had already rented out half of our space to someone else. So, not only were we going to be way in back on the second floor with half the space we needed, but also we were now going to have to pay to completely reconstruct our architectural drawings.

Understanding that he was still a half a million dollars shy of what they would need to open the doors, Andrew continued to dole out just enough money to keep his various service providers on board. In June, the landlord informed him that the building was now ready for occupancy—meaning that the first $10,000 monthly rent payment was due. Andrew made sure to pay that bill on time, and in full.

Grand Opening

The construction business, like many trades, was a close-knit community of craftspeople and professionals. It was not surprising, then, that word was out on the slow-paying, underfunded project up on Laurel Hill that had already gone through three architectural firms and at least that many plan revisions. After a long search, Andrew located a contractor who apparently was not aware of DayOne's precarious financial situation. Along the way, he had signed up another minor investor, so when construction began in August 2000, DayOne had $480,000 on hand. In late November—as the build-out neared completion—the contractor suddenly announced that he would not release the occupancy permits until he and his crew were paid in full for the work they had completed. Andrew recalled that it was another one of those pivotal moments:

I owed these guys something like $200,000, and I didn't have anything left. I just wanted to get to the opening party in January because I felt that, if we got enough people to come and enjoy it and get excited about what we were doing, we'd be able to raise the money we needed. I convinced the contractor to let us open, and at that party, two different guests pulled me aside and said that they wanted to invest. One woman wired me $50,000 the following Monday without so much as glancing at the business plan. I got another $50,000 from a couple who had just had their baby. When we officially opened later that week, the contractor was paid in full, but we were again out of money.

As they had always planned to do, Andrew and Sallie called the area hospitals to let them know that DayOne was open for business and ready to serve. Andrew recalled that the response from the medical community took them completely by surprise:

One reason we thought we could make do with a second-floor location was because our plan had always been to drive traffic by being the type of place that medical professionals would want to send their patients. Instead, hospital directors were telling us that they considered us to be the competition and that they were going to tell all the docs in San Francisco not to support our efforts in any way.

With no help from the hospitals, ineffective signage, cramped facilities (see Exhibit 9.2), and no capital for marketing and advertising, Sallie and Andrew were faced with a harsh reality: Either customers would love the experience enough to spread the word, or their business would quickly wither and die.

EXHIBIT 9.2Signage and Facility

Delivering a Unique Customer Experience

DayOne immediately began attracting a base of young, mostly affluent new and expectant moms seeking advice on everything from the latest baby carriers to sore nipples. Many signed up for the $99 annual membership on the spot to take advantage of discounts offered on programs and workshops (see Exhibit 9.3). Some dropped by out of curiosity or with specific questions for the professional staff. Sallie quickly established a ground rule that she felt struck a fair balance between the needs of these mothers and the need to advance the business:

When someone comes in with a question, we have a 10-minute rule. If your question is so involved that one of us cannot answer it in 10 minutes, then you need to make an appointment, and we need to charge you.1 Ideally, these are people who are members, but many times, if they are not, we can convert them by giving them those 10 minutes and maybe recommending some classes or products right there on the shelves that might be just what they were looking for. And they leave here thinking, wow, where else can I go where I can get that kind of knowledgeable service without having to be a member first?

EXHIBIT 9.3DayOne Membership Flyer

Sallie noted that, because of their customer-care orientation, she and her nursing staff were always looking out for ways to help—without first trying to calibrate whether a particular act of humanity or assistance would generate profits for the business. Pointing to a basic plastic and metal chair in the corner of her office, Sallie said that she wasn't surprised to see that simple kindness had its rewards:

Our favorite story is about that chair. We like new moms to be sitting up straight when they first start nursing—versus a rocking chair. I had one mom—not a member—who said every time she came in for a consult that the only way she could breast feed was in that type of chair. Every time she came in she said it, so finally I said, “Hey, why don't you take the chair home with you until you're feeling more comfortable with the whole process?” She looked at me and said, “Really?

So she took the chair home. The next day she became a member, she bought a breast pump from us instead of the one she was eyeing on eBay, and she went around telling all of her friends that we lent her that chair. She brought it back a few weeks later and has become one of our best customers.

What goes around comes around, and when we give a little bit, it's such a shock to them that they've gotten good service. I have this rule that if there's a mom hanging out in the rocking chair area, one of us goes over and asks if we could get her a glass of cold water. I swear it's like you've just offered them a million dollars! They'll start to ask you questions, and it almost always turns into a sale. It's so funny—and a bit pathetic—that nobody ever thinks about these moms; everybody talks to, and about, the baby.

That's what we do differently. We make them feel good, knowing that if we take care of them, they'll take care of the baby. And all of that is definitely good for business.

Despite an encouraging level of customer interest and loyalty right from the start, the retailing side of the business continued to struggle. Andrew knew what the problem was:

The thing is, I am not a retailer. So everything we did early on was shooting from the hip. Sallie had some experience selling retail products at the hospital, but she was better on the service side. We had hired one retail buyer who lasted two months; didn't know what she was doing. Then another; same thing. The problem was, these people knew a lot about retailing, but we needed somebody who also understood the baby industry.

DayOne had begun to cover its operating expenses by the end of the summer of 2001, but the business was still in dire need of funding. As the capital markets continued to deteriorate that year, fundraising became an even more arduous task than ever before. While the 9–11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast hurt retail sales and drove potential investors further underground, satisfied clients continued to drive new customers to the center.

In January 2002, the retail buyer that Andrew and Sallie had been searching for showed up on their doorstep. Ten-year retailing veteran Jennifer Morris had come over from The Right Start, the largest chain of specialty stores for infants and children in the United States. She recounted how she was drawn to the new venture and alluded to why her predecessors might have been overwhelmed by the task:

I found out about DayOne through working at The Right Start in San Francisco. I would either see a DayOne tote bag or customers would tell me all about it. I started to investigate and found out that DayOne is not the kind of place you'd stumble onto. I was immediately attracted to the energy in this place; from the customers, the staff, the nurses, to the classes and the workshops, everyone just really seemed to love it.

The biggest challenge for us is trying to be a one-stop shop. We have quite a few product categories (see Exhibit 9.4), and I buy from over 100 vendors—sometimes just one item from one vendor. A lot of those decisions are made by listening to our customers. If they come in with a terrific product, we can then go research that item and bring it in. We have no limits on that, really; we carry products from New Zealand, from Australia—from all over the world. If there's a great new product out there, we'll find it.

EXHIBIT 9.4Retail Product Offerings

Sallie pointed out that in a similar way, she and the nursing staff were always looking for instructors and programs2 that would distinguish DayOne as a premiere care center:

We search for the best and invite them to teach their classes here. More and more, though, the good ones come looking for us. We have started a lot of fresh and exciting workshops, but almost immediately other places in town copy what we're doing. Sometimes I wonder how long we can keep it fresh and exciting, but then again, that's what we thrive on.

The DayOne team began its second year of operations finding ways to trim overhead, enhance the customer experience, and refine the retail operations. To further this effort, Andrew tapped New York–based Stephen Cooper—an expert in retailing and finance—to serve as the company's Chief Operating Officer.

By early summer, the company—which in May had been honored with a “Best of SF” accolade (see Exhibit 9.5)—was signing up a steady stream of new members. Many of those clients were now being referred to the facility by local physicians who were quietly ignoring the sentiments of their hospital administrators. One such referral was Lisa Zoener, a new mom who said that she found out about DayOne from her obstetrician:

I have told lots of people about this place; it's definitely a word of mouth type of thing. My husband and I drop a ton of dough here on baby vitamins and other stuff. DayOne products are definitely higher priced than in other stores, but I'm already here for the classes—and a lot of us feel that buying DayOne products is a way to support what they're trying to do here. I don't find the second floor to be a problem—there is a parking garage right downstairs. It was full today, though.

EXHIBIT 9.5SF Weekly Best of 2002 Feature

Although he now had actual operating figures, a slew of customer testimonials, and an appropriate town picked out for the second DayOne, Andrew was still unable to raise the money he would need to proceed with those expansion plans. Then, in November, Andrew received a call that he was sure would change everything.

The Saudi Connection

Unknown to the DayOne staff, one of their very satisfied new moms was the daughter of a Saudi prince. Her father, Samir, was visiting from his home in London and, through her experience, had learned a lot about what DayOne was doing. Andrew described their two-hour meeting at the center:

Samir said that he had an eye for businesses and that he thought what we were doing was brilliant. He said that he was the president of a multinational conglomerate out of London and Saudi Arabia; he wanted to fund our U.S. rollout and also help us export it to other countries.

Andrew sent the prince on his way with a detailed business plan. Due diligence indicated that Samir was indeed who he said he was, so Andrew's excitement grew when the Saudi called a week later to say that he wanted to take it to the next level. That next step was having a colleague of his—a woman based in Arizona who had run four different billion-dollar retail businesses—work as his eyes and ears to determine the best way to move the venture forward.

Ann Pearson, 60, a self-described workaholic and leading advisor to a separate $5-billion new venture fund, spent the entire day at the center and was thrilled with the concept. She explained that to move ahead, she and Andrew would need to build a business plan that would warrant her stamp of approval. Andrew recalled that that's when the real work began:

For the next three months, Ann was flying here every few weeks, and Steve, our COO, was flying in from New York for three days at a time. She had us rewrite an entirely new business plan to sort of grind down to the nitty-gritty every aspect of the business so that she felt that she could put her stamp on it. We spent hundreds of hours, many tens of thousands of dollars. She was like this manic corporate raider–type, driving us really hard.

Along the way, Andrew had begun to notice that Ann didn't seem to have a high regard for his DayOne staff and kept implying that, before the business could begin its rollout, management changes would have to be discussed. It was bad enough when she suggested that Samir's daughter—a junior investment banker—might make a good choice for CFO, but when Ann began to infer that Andrew might not make the cut as CEO, he'd heard enough:

We had gotten into these heavy negotiations, and we had also started getting into huge fights. Ann ended up being an absolute animal; she wanted to drive everyone out of the business and take it over. But if you know me, I am not somebody who is going to get pushed around like that, and I wasn't going to sell out for anything. Then, all of a sudden, Samir calls and says that he's not interested anymore.

It was nearly mid-spring of 2003 by the time Andrew turned away from that mirage—and several more months before the next major investor prospect would surface. The DayOne team now had a positive operating income for the center (see Exhibit 9.6), a detailed business plan with five-year pro-formas (see Exhibits 9.7–9.10), proven managerial performance, and, as always, a need for investment capital.

EXHIBIT 9.6DayOne Income Statement—San Francisco Actuals

EXHIBIT 9.7Five-Year Income Statement Projections—Rollout

EXHIBIT 9.8Five-Year Cash Flow Projections—Rollout

EXHIBIT 9.9Five-Year Balance Sheet Projections—Rollout

EXHIBIT 9.10Five-Year Corporate

Prove It—Again

The DayOne plan called for opening 42 centers in five years, but so far the team found itself in a holding pattern around its flagship location. Andrew thought it ironic that, by overcoming challenges and making compromises to get the first store open, they had developed a business that investors seemed unwilling to accept as a proof of concept:

We are now one of the most trusted brands in San Francisco. People love us. Investors are saying, well, this first center has done great for what it is, but your plan talks about a center that would be on the ground floor with street-side visibility, have support from the hospitals, and be in a bigger, more appropriate space. So because we are talking about a bigger center with bigger economics, they don't want to take the risks.

Andrew estimated that he was going to need about $1.3 million to pay off current debt and open up a center that was more reflective of the business plan model (see Exhibit 9.11). That second DayOne would be sited in an affluent town about 35 miles to the south:

Palo Alto would be the next spot. It's in our back yard, and it's got the right demographics. It would be a bigger center, with more space, twice as many classrooms; twice the business, twice the sales.

EXHIBIT 9.11Typical Center—Development Budget

Sallie noted that, because of the rave reviews her group had received, some investors wondered aloud if that magic could be replicated in other centers:

We have a great reputation in the community, and we set a tone here of warmth; we respect these women. Can we find as good a staff for Palo Alto, and can we train them well enough? Absolutely. Sure, it won't ever be what we have here, but it doesn't have to be to make the business work. I have no doubt that in every community we choose to locate in we can find qualified, caring nurses who would love the chance to do what we are doing here.

She paused—and then added:

We hit bumps, and then we move on. And all the while we keep refining this model; the quality of our workshops, the way we work; it's all so much better than it was even one year ago. So it will happen; I'm sure of it—this struggle is for a reason. Andrew is big on that; it's all about the journey, not the destination.